


Can't You Hear It Calling

by imogenbynight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, Fanfiction Gap, First Kiss, First Time, Led Zeppelin - Freeform, M/M, Time Travel, canonverse, entirely blasphemous use of angelic grace as usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 12:45:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6566758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In between taking the cupid’s bow and Naomi’s arrival, Castiel and Dean take a little time out of time to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't You Hear It Calling

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prizefic for sketchydean, who gave me a whole lot of ideas to play with, and like an evil genie I went and interpreted them in a way that probably wasn’t intended at all. I hope they enjoy it anyway :P This was only meant to be 3k. Oops.

-I-

It takes three hours to get a cupid’s bow, and though he had been desperate to find it before, now that it’s done Castiel can’t help but wish they were still searching. This was the last thing he had to do on Earth. The last task he was to carry out before his final return to Heaven.

Dean is beside him, eyeing the plastic bag that holds Gail’s hand with distaste, and Castiel searches for words. He knew that saying goodbye would be difficult; it’s the reason he even asked Dean to help him with this in the first place, so that he’d have time to think about it. He didn’t think it would be like this, though. 

“Is there anything you need?” he asks finally, and Dean lifts his gaze from the bag, a hunted look in his eyes. “Anything that I can do for you, before I leave?”

Dean doesn’t reply right away, but Castiel is overwhelmed by the flood of longing that pours from him, stronger now than he’s felt ever before despite the fact that they are barely three feet from one another. His grace reaches back, tries to sooth a spiritual pain as though it were a physical one. It doesn’t work. It never does.

That doesn’t stop him from trying.

“I can’t think of anything,” Dean says with a downturned mouth. He blinks, hard. Looks away. “Man, Cas...”

He shakes his head but doesn’t look back up, and Castiel doesn’t know what he should say. He certainly doesn’t want to skip right to the goodbye. Things still feel unfinished, unresolved. He suspects that they always will. The nature of his relationship with Dean has never been simple or easy, and he sees no reason why that should suddenly change just because he wants it to.

“This really fucking sucks,” Dean goes on after a minute. “We never got to just... _be_ , y’know? Just hang out. I always figured there’d be time later.”

Dean shrugs, like he’s not all that shaken up over it, but it’s an obvious cover. Castiel can still feel him aching beneath it. His own pain at the thought muddles in with it, creating a dizzying feedback loop of longing. He smiles in an attempt to hide it.

“As did I,” he says. 

“A Delorean would come in handy right about now,” Dean jokes weakly. “Hell, I’d settle for a Hot Tub Time Machine.”

It’s nothing but a deflection, that joke, but it spurs something in the back of Castiel’s mind. Makes him wonder. Makes him hope.

“Perhaps,” he says after a moment. “Perhaps that isn’t as impossible as it sounds.”

“What?”

“The hot tub is,” he clarifies with a wave of the hand, “but time travel… I could take us back. We could spend a couple of hours in a simpler time, and then I could return us to this moment, right here.” 

“Cas, you said last time you sent Sam and I back that you never wanted to do it again. It took too much out of you.”

“I’m about to be sealed within Heaven for eternity. What do I need to conserve my grace for?” 

Dean just blinks at him, like he’s searching for the flaw in his logic and failing to find it.

“If I can… for once in my existence, if I can be truly selfish just once, I’d like to spend some time with you while I still can.” 

While Dean is flustered and going pink in the ears from Cas’ earnest declaration, Cas touches his cheek, and flies them out of time.

-II-

The world tilts, and Dean lurches sideways, and at once he’s staggering forward in a dark alleyway. Cas is beside him, leaning with one hand against a stone wall. Dean can see his breath fogging out in front of him in the suddenly frigid air.

“You good, Cas?” He asks, and Castiel takes a moment to gather himself before he stands up straight and nods. With a glance around, Dean notices he’s not holding the bag anymore. “Uh, where’s the hand?”

“I’m still holding it in 2013,” Castiel says, and waves away Dean’s confusion. “Manipulating time and space is complicated.”

“Okay,” Dean says, deciding not to think too hard about it. “And we are… where exactly?”

“Boston,” Castiel tells him, his mouth quirking up at one side as he looks at Dean. “Happy Birthday.” 

“What?” 

“Well, I suppose we are ten years early, but you have always expressed regret that you were not alive early enough for their first tour, and when I realized there was a show on your date of birth I couldn’t resist.” 

Dean blinks at him, and Castiel moves toward a door in the stone wall. It’s marked STAFF ONLY, but it’s propped slightly open, and Castiel pulls it wide, gesturing for Dean to go inside. It’s far warmer, almost stiflingly so, and the smell of cheap beer and cigarettes wafts toward them from deeper in the building. Somewhere on the other side of the walls, a riled up crowd chatters and cheers and chants indistinctly.

Dean thinks he hears the name of the band they’re calling for, but it can’t be. He turns to look at Castiel with wide eyes.

“Cas.”

“It’s a good thing you speak so frequently of this group,” Castiel tells him, “or I wouldn’t have known where or when to bring you.” 

“ _Cas_.” 

“Yes?” 

“Did you. Are we seriously--” the crowd through the wall gets a little louder, and Cas looks down the hall. 

“We should go out there,” he says, and rests his hand on Dean’s shoulder, pushing him down the hall. 

Dean glances back at him with wide eyes before hurrying down the hall and finally bursting out into the main room, where-- holy _fucking_ christ-- Robert Plant is sauntering onto the stage. Dean reaches blindly to the side and grabs Cas’s arm hard enough to bruise.

“Cas. It’s. _How_.” 

“Shh,” Cas says, leaning in close enough that Dean feels his breath. “They’re starting.”

Until now, Dean could count on one hand the number of times he’s felt weak at the knees. He’s not entirely sure how he stays standing when the rest of the band makes their way out, but through some miracle his legs keep functioning.

He feels a little bit like he might be sick through sheer joy, and has the absurd thought that _I can’t throw up, what if Jimmy Page sees me barf?_

He makes eye contact with Robert Plant during _I Can’t Quit You Baby,_ finally coherent enough to sing along, and the singer winks at him. Dean feels like his knees are definitely going to give out now, but something holds him up.

In the middle of the breakdown of _Dazed and Confused_ , a solid three quarters of the crowd starts clapping like they think the song is over, and it occurs to Dean that the band’s first studio album has barely been out for two weeks at this point. They don’t know the song. They don’t know most of the songs.

“This is so weird,” he says to Castiel, and finally realizes that he’s still holding on to him. He loosens his grip and lets his hand run down the length of his arm before dropping contact completely, savoring the touch for as long as he can. They’re outside of their normal time, after all. If that doesn’t grant him a little extra leeway to touch the guy, he doesn’t know what will.

Their knuckles bump together as the crowd shifts around them. 

When the band takes a break, the crowd disperses, heading to the bar or the restroom, and Dean takes advantage of the temporary lull in activity to wrap his arm around Castiel’s shoulder and pull him closer to the stage. When they reach a spot near the front, he leans close to his ear. It’s nowhere near loud enough right now to warrant it, but he’s feeling absurdly happy and reckless, and it’s not hurting anyone.

“This is hands down the best thing anyone has ever done for me,” he says, feeling Cas’ hair tickle his cheek, and Castiel pulls away to look at him, his own arm coming up to loop over Dean’s shoulders in a mirror of Dean’s.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” he says. 

“How about you, though?” Dean asks him. “Are you having a good time?” 

“It’s an oddly exhilarating experience,” Cas says after a moment’s consideration. “The energy that fills the room when the crowd really feels the music. Seeing the shift in your soul when they play a song you love.” He smiles. “I can see why you enjoy it so much. I wish we’d done this sooner.” 

“Yeah, me too.”

Dean isn’t sure how much time passes, but though he feels as though he’s only staring at Castiel for a handful of seconds, the crowd suddenly erupts in cheers as the band comes back on stage. He grins a little awkwardly, pulling his arm free, and turns to watch in a daze as _White Summer_ shifts into _Black Mountain Side_. 

He’s still enjoying himself right up until they start playing _Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,_ and then he feels his heart shift into his throat. Beside him, he feels Castiel tensing up, and the fact that he’s made the connection too only makes Dean feel worse. The transience of the night is suddenly all he can think about, like a weight tied to him and dragging him down. At once his eyes feel prickly, his mouth dry, his throat tight. He can’t deal with this. 

He fucking loves this song but right now he feels like if he stands here any longer he’s going to cry until he’s sick.

By the time the song reaches it’s climax he’s lost his breath completely. He turns without a word, the crowd too dense, too crushing, and pushes through the people, ignoring the sound of Castiel calling him. He just keeps moving, moving, shoving, moving until he’s bursting out through a door into the street. The air is icy cold and it’s drizzling. He desperately gulps in frigid air until his lungs hurt. 

When the door opens behind him he closes his eyes and leans forward with his hands on his knees, unable to meet Castiel’s eyes.

“Dean? Are you alright?” 

“No, I’m. _Fuck_ ,” he didn’t mean to admit it, not that lying would have been all that effective right now, and he doesn’t even fight it when Castiel touches his shoulder, prompting him to stand up and look at him. “No, I’m not, Cas.” He heaves in a breath that feels solid and sharp in his chest. Might as well say it. He’s pretty sure it’s written all over his face, anyway. “You’re gonna leave.” 

At his words, Cas looks like the wind got knocked out of him. Something in his face seems to crumple, and Dean feels a special kind of guilt at the knowledge that he’s managed to put that look on the face of being who shouldn’t even feel. 

“I wish I didn’t have to,” he says, voice full of remorse as though he owes Dean a damn thing. Dean just shakes his head, and then Castiel’s hand is on his cheek.

It makes sense, he thinks. Castiel is going to take the band-aid approach; one move, right off. He’s going to fly them back to their time, and leave, and-- Dean grabs at his hand desperately, as though that will stop him from doing it. But they don’t shift through time or space. They stay exactly as they are, close and quiet in the alley outside a Boston bar in 1969.

A long moment passes, and Castiel is still just looking at him, wide eyed and frightened and sad, and Dean lets out a shuddering breath that makes him feel like a child. When he tries to turn his face away in shame Castiel just lifts his other hand to hold him in place. One on each cheek, framing him.

“Please, Cas,” Dean hears himself saying, though hell if he knows what he’s even begging for right now. Nothing he wants is possible. Nothing he wants is deserved.

Castiel’s thumbs are resting on the rise of Dean’s cheekbones, and they move minutely, sliding back and forth so gently that Dean almost thinks he’s imagining it. But Cas is holding his gaze, and he’s holding his breath, and his hands are warm, and Dean feels electric under his skin.

“I don’t want you to go,” he forces out, and the words feel like bleeding. His throat raw, like he’s been crying himself hoarse despite his dry eyes. “Cas, I don’t want you to go.” 

Castiel just gazes at him, and he smiles a broken smile, closing his eyes as he tilts Dean’s face forward to press a kiss to his cheek, like a blessing. Benediction. Apology. It’s holy and chaste, and Dean holds his breath until his lips move away, only to alight again on his left brow. Dean’s hand tightens around Castiel’s wrist. He tilts his head to the side as Castiel’s lips ghost over his right brow, the corner of his eye.

“I know,” Castiel finally murmurs back, lips just barely grazing Dean’s cheek. “I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t have to.”

He’s so close, so, so close, and the play of his lips over Dean’s skin is too much and not enough, and if he’s leaving anyway then Dean is done playing. 

It’s only a matter of millimeters, the slightest turn of his head, and those lips are finally on his own, warm and soft and perfect.

-III-

Castiel doesn’t sleep, so all of his dreams are deliberate. Touching Dean like this has been one of them for longer than he cares to admit. 

The smooth heat of his mouth is at odds with the cold bite in the air, and Castiel pours himself into the moment with abandon. Something primal overtakes him, something that stems from someplace deeper in him than any conscious effort ever could, and he surges forward to press Dean against the stone wall as the drizzle turns to rain. The water draws cold lines down the skin under his collar and makes Dean’s warm fingers slip against the nape of his neck.

Through the wall of the building Castiel can hear the crowd cheering as rhythmic drumming turns wild and frenzied, and he finds himself following it’s lead, letting the cadence of his kiss grow as fervent as the music.

He craves Dean’s mouth, but each taste just intensifies the craving for more, more, _more_ , and when he feels Dean’s hands shivering as they wander over his sides, his lower back, pulling him closer from the hip, he knows they have two choices; get out of the cold rain, or return to their own time.

He’s not ready to give this up just yet. 

He pulls away, just slightly, finding that he needs to steady his breath, and casts his senses wide.

“Cas,” Dean starts, a question forming in his throat, but Castiel finds what he’s looking for before he can get it out.

Two blocks away, there’s a hotel with an empty suite. He lets his wings carry them there with a single heavy beat. The sound of rain is abruptly muffled, and though the room is dark, it’s warm and clean inside.

“Better?” Castiel asks him. Dean just pulls him close again without speaking. Castiel lets him. Allows himself to be pulled and pushed, his head tilted, his throat exposed.

The sensation of a kiss there is surprising in its intimacy, though he suspects it has to do with the vulnerable nature of the throat, of the trust that he is showing Dean in exposing it. It’s animal, somehow, and Castiel finds himself amazed by how quickly he’s unraveling, his celestial nature unfurling around him to expose the being within, just as swayed by touch as the most base creatures of Earth.

Ordinarily, it would be easy to let himself become distracted by his thoughts, disconnected as he often is from the physical plane. But Dean’s teeth scrape over the side of his neck, and his tongue laves at his skin, and Castiel loses all focus. Dean sucks hard enough on his collarbone to bruise, and Castiel becomes little more than a series of actions and reactions. Sigh, grip, gasp, flex.

“This never looked like much from Heaven,” he murmurs when Dean’s lips travel upward, over his jaw and back to lightly bite at his earlobe.

“Hmm?” Dean asks.

“Sex,” Castiel explains, sliding his fingers into Dean’s hair and tugging. “It always looked awkward and repetitive. It’s different if you’re participating.”

Dean pulls back a little to look him in the eye.

“This isn’t sex,” he says.

“Not yet,” Castiel agrees, and leans in to press his mouth to Dean’s throat, kissing it hard before echoing Dean’s own actions by grazing his teeth over his ear. “But it seems like the obvious progression, and I’m amenable if you are.”

“You’re _amenable_?”

“If you don’t like amenable, perhaps eager would be better?” Castiel asks him, and bites again, soft on his jaw. “Hungry? Ardent?”

“Alright, yeah, I hear you,” Dean tells him, his hands gripping Castiel’s hips tightly as his own rock forward. “I’m with you.”

The feeling of him, hard and heated through his jeans, is proof enough that he means it. Castiel makes sure to let his own arousal be known, grinding it against Dean’s thigh and letting out an involuntary gasp at the heady thrill that trips through him. Over the years, as he’s found himself tripping down from heaven, skirting closer and closer to humanity, he has experienced this feeling more than once. The spreading warmth, the strangely pleasant ache. Each time before, he’s simply willed it away. Tonight he embraces it. Chases each sensation to its gasping end.

When Dean pushes his coat from his arms, letting it pool on the floor at their feet, he thinks it only fair that Dean’s jacket go the same way. The presence of an overshirt beneath it is frustrating. He shoves at the blue denim, wrestling it from Dean’s arms.

“Why do you wear so many layers?”

Dean’s startled laugh is enough to pull him out of the moment, and he looks down to find his hands vanishing beneath his black t-shirt, fingers playing over Dean’s sides.

“It’s a serious question,” he says, his mouth lifting in a lopsided smile.

“Yeah,” Dean says, grinning back. “I have no idea. I’m just--”

Dean sucks in a sharp breath when Castiel’s thumb skims over a sensitive spot on his hip, so Castiel does it again. He wonders how many other sounds he might draw from Dean tonight. How many things he’s been missing out on. He makes it his mission to find out, trailing his hands over every patch of skin he can reach until it’s not enough to touch, and he pushes the soft cotton up over Dean’s stomach, his chest, until Dean lifts his arms and he pulls it off completely.

The streetlamp shining through the rain-spattered window makes Dean’s skin seem to glow with spots of blue and gold, another layer of constellations over the freckles that already dot his chest. Castiel maps them with his fingertips, so distracted that he doesn’t notice the hands working his own shirt open until Dean makes an impatient noise at his inability to pull it off his arms while they’re otherwise occupied.

“Who’s wearing too many layers, now?” Dean asks him, and Castiel is shocked by his own giddy laugh as he pulls free of the sleeves and drops his shirt onto the rapidly growing pile on the floor. Dean’s smug expression at making Castiel laugh is enough to make him want to retaliate. He does so with a wave of the hand, divesting them both of every remaining stitch of clothing in an instant. Dean’s eyes just about bug out of his head. “That’s cheating!”

“It’s efficient,” Castiel argues, and pulls Dean close again before he can respond. The feeling of skin pressed to skin is intoxicating, and though Castiel assumes it’s his inexperience that makes him feel that way, Dean’s stuttered gasp tells him that he’s not alone. 

Despite the presence of a soft bed mere feet away, they wind up with their things, tangled together on the floor. Castiel can’t find it in himself to care.

“This… this is not where I thought this day was going,” Dean tells him, shifting to make himself more comfortable. He yanks his own jeans out from under them, shoving them away before he settles back onto his elbows, gazing up at Castiel.

“Is that a complaint?”

“Is that a serious question?” Dean shoots back with a laugh. “What’s gotten into you today?”

“Nothing, yet,” Castiel quips, surprising himself with the speed of his own response considering how fuzzy his thoughts become with every shift of Dean’s body beneath him.

“Christ,” Dean says, and moves until his knees bracket him, his shins pressing along Castiel’s sides. “You know I, uh. We could do it the other way. If you want to, I mean. We’re already kind of… and I’d be…”

He trails off, his cheeks darkening, and Castiel lifts his brow.

“Amenable?” he suggests.

Dean glares at him, but it’s half-hearted at best.

“I’m still an angel, Dean,” Castiel tells him, sliding his hands along Dean’s thighs and squeezing as he rocks against him again, leaning down to press his mouth to Dean’s collarbone. “I’m going to need explicit consent if I’m to enter you.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dean laughs, his legs tightening. “I’m amenable, Cas. I’m eager. I’m chomping at the goddamn bit.”

It doesn’t escape Castiel’s notice that they are lacking a number of required items for what Dean is suggesting they do, but the thought of flying away, even for a moment, is anathema to him. He shapes his grace instead, sliding it down through Dean’s skin and over every sensitive nerve, stroking him until the quiver of his body matches that of his soul.

“What. The. Ever-loving _fu--_ ”

Dean’s words grow halting and fractured as Castiel continues, his back arching up from the floor at the play of grace within him.

Cas touches his chest, his throat, his face. Seeing his thumb push down soft on Dean’s lower lip makes his body ache all over. He doesn’t bother to move it away before he claims his mouth again; just uses the leverage to pry Dean’s mouth wider and slides his tongue inside until Dean groans.

When he finally allows his free hand to venture between Dean’s legs, to slip his fingers inside where he’s open and tingling from the touch of grace, Castiel gasps at the pulse of longing that rushes through him.

“I’m here,” he breathes against Dean’s mouth, curling his fingers deeper and feeling a strange kind of flip in his stomach at the sound Dean makes in reply. “I’m with you.”

Despite the assertion he loses track of where he is almost immediately after when Dean’s hand closes around his erection, sliding from the slick head and down before tightening and pulling back up. Everything fades to pinpoint sensation and movement. Dean’s shifting body beneath him, his guiding hand; tension, pressure, _heat_. 

The feeling of sinking into Dean’s is unlike anything he’s ever experienced, and once he’s there he’s overwhelmed by the notion that Dean’s soul, for the first time since they met, is reaching out to him without hesitation.

Their rhythm isn’t like before. Where their kisses had been fast and frenzied, this is slow, measured, like the resting heartbeat that Cas has maintained in his human chest for the years he has inhabited it alone. He feels, on some strange wavelength, that they are together in every sense of this moment. Moving together, but also breathing together, living together, being together.

As he reaches some unknowable peak and tumbles over the other side, it strikes Castiel more deeply than ever that he doesn’t want to leave.

The rain outside is heavier than ever, thunderous against the roof, and it muffles the sound of their labored breath as they lay, spent, against the foot of the bed.

Castiel stares down at his thighs. At the smooth, tan skin. At the fine, dark hairs that thin out as they climb his shins and disappear at the knee. At the spattered slick of his release and Dean’s.

It’s astounding, he thinks, that he can feel so buoyant and so utterly crushed at the same time.

He feels as though there’s a weight on his chest, bearing down, and when he lifts his hand it is shaking. Dean catches hold of it. Something in the action breaks him. 

Castiel lets out a sound unlike any he’s ever heard from his own mouth, and turns where he sits, twists at the hip, pulling Dean’s hand to his chest as he slides the other arm around Dean’s waist. He twines their legs, shifts them together, wraps himself around Dean with his nose pressed to the hollow of his throat, breathing him in. Committing everything of him to memory.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps into Dean’s skin, shocked to find himself crying when he never thought himself capable. “Dean, I’m so, so sorry.”

Dean just holds him, running his hands through his hair and making low, nonsense sounds that Castiel doesn’t understand the purpose of until he realizes that the sound of a voice so near and warm is enough to calm him down. They shift together once he’s breathing evenly again, moving until Dean has his back turned to Castiel with their hands woven together and pressed against his soft stomach.

“Will I see you?” Dean asks after a long time, his thumb stroking over Castiel’s hand. “When I die, I mean. Presuming I get in--”

“You will,” Castiel assures him, and presses his lips to the back of Dean’s neck.. “I’ve no doubt about that.”

“And you’ll be there, right? You can come see me?”

“If you want me to.”

“I’ll want you to,” Dean says sharply. “Won’t be heaven without you.”

Right now in another time they are saying goodbye for the last time. Castiel wonders how it can be when it seems that they have only just found one another. Perhaps it’s reckless, but Castiel can’t bring himself to take them back yet. Instead he waits until morning, when Dean wakes blearily and stretches out beside him, groaning at the way his shoulders pop from sleeping on the floor.

He claims to be aching all over, but he’s smiling when he says it, and denies Castiel’s offer to heal him.

“It’s a good ache,” he tells him, and kisses him halfway through dressing, his shirt held in his hands. “I’m keeping it.”

When Cas finally spreads his wings, his grace strains and shudders with the effort of keeping them on the right path, but he manages, depositing them back in the parking lot of Doc Marley’s bar in 2013 only a millisecond after they left. He’s still standing, and shouldn’t have any trouble getting Dean anywhere he needs to go before he leaves for Heaven, but he still can’t help but feel weakened. He suspects that’s just a side effect of what passed between them.

Having had a brief glimpse of what could have been only to have it immediately stolen away hurts in a way that he could not easily explain if asked to. He lets his fingers slip over Dean’s wrist and down to his palm, and is just about to ask if he’s alright when Dean’s cell rings.

It’s Kevin, calling about the tablet. Dean is barely off the phone when Naomi flickers into existence before them, telling Castiel to abandon his plans. Telling them that Sam is moments from death.

When he brings Dean to the church, just in time to go inside and save his brother, he leaves before Dean can ask him again to stay. Whatever happens next, he needs to stop any more pain from raining down on the Winchesters.

From Metatron’s chamber in heaven, having his grace cut from his throat, he can hear Dean calling him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to be really weirded out, you can listen to a recording of another gig they played at the same venue two days later. The setlist is the same. It’s really weird, because their first album had only been released about two weeks before this show, and nobody in the audience seems to know the songs yet. They applaud in the middle of Dazed and Confused like they think the breakdown is an outro. It’s bizarre. It’s [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3cQpwCRC10) on Youtube.


End file.
